There is no limit to human boneheadedness, but does this mean we manage and regulate the industries serving boneheadedness, or should we let boneheads just be boneheads?
Politicians are forever ‘slashing unnecessary red tape’. In their media releases it will say ‘cut red tape ’ but put a mic in front of them and ‘cut’ becomes ‘slash’.
Invariably the red tape being slashed has been created by politicians in the first place.
Recently, the Australian health minister announced new, non-mandatory standards for “primary and community health services”.
The health minister clarified that we’re talking optometrists, dentists, general practitioners, audiologists here, but also alternative medicine practitioners, “Chinese medicine clinics” and so on.
According to the Chief Medical Officer of the Commission responsible for these primary and community healthcare standards, they will be “a game changer for the health sector in Australia, by giving practitioners the tools to be even better”.
Let’s pause here.
Why would you introduce formal standards to govern a section of the healthcare industry that is already good? Why is the health minister rolling out the red tape to make an industry perform “even better”?
Don’t governments normally leave that to ‘the market’ and to ‘competition’?
“In time, Australians will have confidence that when they visit a primary or community healthcare service accredited to the standards, they are receiving safe and high-quality health care – no matter the type of health service they are using or where they access it”, the Commission’s Chief Medical Officer said by way of further explanation.
So, is the Government introducing these standards to reassure the public?
This seems odd, because in Australia doctors, dentists, optometrists etc are already generally trusted.
In fact, doctors and mainstream primary health services generally are already mandatorily accredited under the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards.
There is, of course, no conceivable need for these health services to also get accredited under the new, optional Primary and Community Healthcare Standards. The new, three optional standards are simply a subset of the eight already existing mandatory standards.
The conclusion is that the only ‘health services practitioners’ targeted by the Primary and Community Healthcare Standards are ‘alternative medicine practitioners’: quacks.
It is of course disrespectful of the health minister and the chief medical officer to sweep together legitimate, qualified health professionals and quacks, chaps who grind up rhino horn and sell it as a cure for inadequate tumescence or who stick pins in people. It is disrespectful in that it gives quacks equal status with people who know what they are doing.
So, does Australia need national quackery standards?
You bet.
If you are a private health insurer in Australia and competing for business, you need to have as many manifestations of quackery in your offering as you can muster. Doesn’t matter the cures and therapies range from merely the clinically unproven to the laughable and dangerous, from placebos to rotgut to rough handling (massages). People want quackery. Even if it kills them, which it frequently does.
But a private health insurer wants to make sure they only reimburse treatments provided by accredited quacks, not because they are worried about the lack of benefit or the likelihood of harm but about litigation.
That’s why we need national quackery standards. Use an unaccredited quack, and your insurance won’t cover it!
Over time, only the quacks that meet the standards will remain in business.
At that point, the same private health insurance lobby that got the Australian health minister to perversely sing the praises of quackery and impose a charade of standards, accreditation and compliance monitoring, will express its outrage at the unnecessary red tape that is causing the compliance cost of quackery to sky-rocket.
And the Australian health minister?
Will make an announcement cutting the unnecessary red tape represented by the Primary and Community Health Services Standards.
Cutting?
Nay, slashing!
